Saturday 19 February 2011

Beef bourguignon


This is a totally luxurious dinner, its the kind of food you want to eat while listening to Otis Reading, actually heres a little tune for the background while your cooking...  We only have this meal it once in a while but when we do we go all out and serve it with dauphinois potatoes, which you can find under my accompaniments section.  The richness of the red wine against the beef is just perfection in a dish in my opinion!!  Give it a go you won’t be disappointed.  Its surprising how good it is considering you just throw everything in a pot and band it in the oven for a couple of hours...  It’s even better the next day heated up.



Ingredients
Serves 4-6
1kilo stewing/braising steak or shin beef
1 bottle of full bodied red wine
4 fat cloves of garlic
1 punnet of button mushrooms
6-10 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
a few handfuls of baby onions, peeled (if you can’t get these just use 2 large onions sliced)
salt and pepper
flour for dusting the beef
a sprig of fresh thyme
1tbsp of tomato puree
1 beef stock cube for richness, or around 100 mls of homemade stock.

Method
Dice the beef and season it well, coat in a little flour, which will thicken the sauce.
In a hot saucepan add a little oil and seal the meat on all sides.
Take the meat out of the pan and add the onions.
Sweat the onions gently for 5 minutes or so until soft on a medium heat.
In a separate frying pan add a knob of butter and olive oil and fry off the mushrooms (whole dont chop them)
Add the garlic to the onions and stir.
Turn the heat up, add a little more oil if the pan is dry and add the chopped bacon.
Stir until the bacon is cooked.
Add the cooked mushrooms to the pan.
Add the beef back to the pan and any juices which have collected in the bowl/plate.
Season the dish with salt and pepper and add the tomato puree.
Add a sprig of thyme to the pan.
Cover the contents of the pan with red wine (it usually takes the full bottle)
Top up with the stock cube, the meat should be just covered.
Bring the dish to the boil, let it boil for a minute or so, then put the lid on and put the pot in the oven, gas mark 2 for anything between 2 and 3 hours.  The meat will be cooked after 2 but even more tender after 3.
Works wicked in a slow cooker too.

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